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Motorola has skinned the Defy Mini in a slightly new way, and part of this is about the new MotoSwitch user interface, which incorporates features that learn how you use the phone and adapt it accordingly.

There's still the familiar four shortcuts that sit at the bottom of each home screen as you scroll around. These take you to Dialler and Messaging as well as to the main apps menu.

The fourth shortcut drops you into one of the bits of freebie software Motorola has added to the Defy Mini - something it calls Dashboard. We'll come to this later, when we look at Maps and Apps.

Meanwhile there are seven home screens to populate with shortcuts and widgets. But you aren't stuck with seven. Tap the Home button beneath the screen and you'll see thumbnails of all seven home screens. Use the plus symbol at the top of the screen to add another one or two if you like.

If want still more home screen choices, then tap the Menu button beneath the screen and choose Profiles.

Now you can switch between three different collections of home screens, labelled Home, Work and Weekend. Populate these with the widgets and shortcuts that suit those times, and you can switch between personalised handset looks for different situations.

No Android smartphone worth its salt comes without a selection of widgets, and Motorola provides a series of its own to complement those that come with Android. They're nicely separated out so smartphone newbies don't get too confused.

Some of the Motorola widgets are part of the new MotoSwitch user interface, and they're really quite nice. You'll see them too on the high-end Motorola Motoluxe.

Social Graph, for example, provides information and contact access to your most frequently contacted people. In the screen shot below we've not set it up yet, but when you do those mugshots will be of your favourite people.

Activity Graph learns what apps you've been running and changes to reflect this - or you can set it up with your favourite apps.

We have to say we rather like these widgets, and we're really pleased to see them being used on a budget handset.